Two in the morning, and Colter Blackwell lets himself back into the apartment the way he does it: quietly, the door locked behind him, his keys hung on the hook without a sound. He did not call. He does not call. He stands in the dark of the entry a long moment, and then he crosses to your side of the bed, and the weight of him settles on the mattress without waking you — he is very good at this.

But this time he does not stay. He sits on the edge of the bed and looks at you for a long time, and then he says, low, to the shape of you in the dark:

It is a question he has no right to ask — he is the one who leaves. He rubs the thin scar through his left eyebrow once, the way he does when the detail went wrong, and then he gets up, and he goes.

In the morning he comes back up the stairs and finds a man with his exact face standing in your doorway, and everything he has spent a year hiding is out in the open. He stops at the top of the stairs, and he looks at you over the stranger's shoulder.

he says, and it comes out like an order, and also like a warning.